Beth And Hunter tried for a baby for 6 years and finally we’re blessed with Noah but motherhood his so much more difficult than Beth ever imagined! Struggling with juggling Noah and packing up her father’s home as he enters care for dementia she feels isolated and lost.

In the clean up of her family home she finds notes from her mother and her own struggles with postpartum depression and begins to question some of her childhood memories of the mother she was told died in a car accident when she was young.. Certain stories and dates suddenly don’t add up and Beth is desperate to discover the truth.

#netgalley #KellyRimmer #TruthsINevrrToldYou

Beth Walsh is the youngest in her family, she has two brothers Tim and Jeremy and an older sister Ruth. Despite the loss of their mother Grace in a car accident when they were all toddlers, the siblings had a happy childhood, the family's very close and they all love their dad Patrick.

Patrick’s health has started to decline, he has heart problems and is now suffering from dementia. The siblings have to make the difficult choice of putting their father into an aged care home and decide what to do with his house? Beth offers to clean out her dad’s home, she’s on maternity leave, and she has a five month old baby boy Noah and has the time. Beth’s husband Hunter and her siblings have been worried about her, they ask her all the time if she is OK, and she tells them she’s fine, but she’s not herself and they’re not sure if her tackling the house is a good idea? Beth's a psychologist, seeking medical advice about her not coping with motherhood, she’s very worried how it might effect her career and she's sure she can deal with it by herself.

While cleaning out her dad’s house, Beth notices the attic door has a lock on it, it’s rather odd and she can’t understand why her dad had a lock installed? When she finally gains access to the room she's shocked to find it’s a total mess, her dad's turned into a hoarder and he he's taken up painting? While wading through the mess in her father’s attic, she finds an old photo album, it contains her parents wedding photos, some old papers and she assumes they were written by her mother?

When she starts reading about her dad as a young husband she’s rather shocked, her mother complained about him staying out late after work, not helping her at all with her four children, he wasted money and he drank a lot? The dad Beth grew up with worked hard, he ran a successful building company, he was responsible, everyone liked him and he was a wonderful father.
Beth knows nothing about her mother’s side of the family, as she delves deeper into the past she discovers she has an Aunt Maryanne, her mother’s sister and she’s still alive. With so many unanswered questions, she contacts her Aunt, she hopes she can shed some light on her parent’s marriage and her mother’s death?

Soon it’s very obvious that both Beth and her mother Grace struggled as new mothers, it’s not just sleep deprivation, being tired or not having any time to themselves, they both felt like they carried this huge weight of expectation on their shoulders and it’s a very heavy burden.

Mother and daughter suffered from post-partum depression, but during the 1950’s when Patrick took Grace to the doctor, Grace received no help at all and she just had to accept that when women married, they had babies and sometimes more than you wanted to have or could cope with looking after.
I highly recommend reading The Truths I Never Told You it’s an emotional book to read, it’s heartbreaking, full of family secrets and a times it’s very confronting. It tackles very relevant subjects such as post-partum depression, motherhood, contraception, society’s expectation, infertility and family life. I enjoyed the book, all thoughts expressed in this review are my own and I gave the book fours stars.

Beth Walsh is approaching 40, and just had her first baby. In the throw of what seems to be postpartum depression, her family and husband are desperately trying to help, but she is just withdrawing. Her father is terminally ill with little time left and she is just trying to "keep things together".

This book switches between Beth and a prior timeline with her father as a young father and weaves it ways between the two stories as we try and reconcile her father from when she was born with the loved father he has become.

This book is well written and an easy read, although the subject matter isn't always so. Although I enjoyed the book and would read more by the author, I felt there was a bit of repitition and a good 100 pages could have been cut out without removing any of the story.

Recommended for those who enjoy character driven novels and family sagas.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Book blurb…
It begins with the discovery of a tattered letter in the attic ... A heart-tugging story of family secrets by the Top 10 bestselling Australian author
1959: Grace is a young mother with four children under four. All she ever wanted was to have a family of her own, but there are thoughts Grace cannot share with anyone in the months after childbirth. Instead she pours her deepest fears into the pages of a notebook, hiding them where she knows husband Patrick will never look. When Grace falls pregnant again, she turns to her sister, Maryanne, for help.
1996: When Beth's father, Patrick, is diagnosed with dementia, she and her siblings make the heart-wrenching decision to put him into care. As Beth is clearing the family home, she discovers a series of notes. Patrick's children grew up believing their mother died in a car accident, but these notes suggest something much darker may be true.

My thoughts…
PLOT
Told using different time periods, the plot snakes towards the truth. The perfectly plotted dual timeline novel provides equally compelling story threads. This novel was well told but I had a preference for the 1959 time line as I felt it held the most emotional story elements / character arc.
PACE
A well-paced story. I took a while to get into it, but for me that was likely because I favoured the 1959 period and wanted more of it.
CHARACTERS
I usually have a favourite in books I enjoy and in this case Grace and Marianne were the characters I was emotionally drawn to. They were represented in the 1959 side of the story. Beth (in 1996) kind of annoyed me as the story revealed itself. I felt for her situation, but I really did not warm to her.
OVERALL FEELINGS ABOUT THE STORY
A great read and an unforgettable story of motherhood.

Truths I Never Told is written in two different timelines and Aussie author Kelly Rimmer has done an outstanding job in bringing those two timelines together.

This is an unforgettable story of motherhood, marriage, family and so much more and one you will find very difficult to put down. I absolutely loved and thoroughly enjoyed this book and have no hesitation in highly recommending it to anyone who is looking for their next read.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for my digital copy to read and review.

"Sometimes moments of change happen during quiet conversations like this, when a simple shift in perspective empowers you to make a choice you just haven’t been able to make before.”


Truths I Never Told You is yet another winning tale by Kelly Rimmer - she never fails to deliver on the emotional stakes. Not only is she a great storyteller, but she stands up ready to tackle issues that many an author may shy away from and she does so with such sensitivity and compassion. This book left me fairly speechless as it is just so emotional and really pulls at one's heartstrings.


I am a fan of dual time narratives especially when done well and this is one such example. Told by main characters past and present, provides real depth to the tale from differing viewpoints. You cannot help but empathise given the circumstances and combined with the quality of writing that elicits such responses from a diverse array of characters. Kelly’s writing is completely addictive as she compels you to keep turning those pages to reach a conclusion. She Is an author you must try if you have not already done so.


"I feel his absence. The room smells like Dad - his aftershave and deodorant linger in the air. This scent is warm hugs on sad days .... Dad, how am I ever going to survive without you?"


Detailing life in the 1950s and present day, the focus mainly surrounds that of postnatal depression - how the two eras tackle it is rather striking. There are other issues covered as well in the book such as dementia and family dynamics - all equally compelling in my opinion. There are many secrets that are slowly revealed over the course of reading, demonstrating Kelly’s writing is not only one of compassion but also intrigue, yet another highlight.


This is a book I highly recommend as the depth and breadth is really quite remarkable. The comparisons between the generations is a revelation. An incredibly moving story that will surely break your heart in places. Kelly’s research on the social topics, the way she captures and engages through quality characters and cleverly tying the narrative all together so well at the end is a recommendation in itself to read this book. Keep tackling the big stories Kelly, you do it with such aplomb, it is a credit to you and keeps your readers coming back for more.


"This was what I failed to understand about love before I experienced it myself. Love doesn’t just need compromise to survive - love, to its very essence, is compromise. It’s genuinely wanting what’s best for the other person, even when it trumps your own preferences."




This review is based on a complimentary copy from the publisher and provided through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The quoted material may have changed in the final release.

Truths I Never Told You is the eleventh novel by best-selling Australian author, Kelly Rimmer. Bethany Evans and her siblings have accepted that their father needs to go into care: living alone with heart failure and dementia is a recipe for disaster. Despite (or perhaps because of) having five-month-old Noah to care for, Beth volunteers to sort out Patrick Walsh’s house while they decide what to do with it.

When they get the attic unlocked, it’s quite the opposite of the scrupulously neat house their father kept. What intrigues Beth most, though, is a series of ever-darkening paintings that seem to be somehow related to yellowed, hand-written notes spread throughout the mess. Beth soon realises the notes are written by Grace, the mother she barely knew, the mother who died in a car accident when she was just a toddler. Or did she? The notes seem to indicate quite a different end for Grace Walsh.

The story is told by multiple narrators alternating between two clearly-marked time periods. Forty years apart, they illustrate the great divide over that time in social attitudes on certain issues like abortion, contraception and women’s rights, while also demonstrating that mindsets about others, like mental illness and the stigma attached to it, have changed very little.

It may seem that Rimmer initially rather labours the point on Post-Natal Depression, but it does allow her to paint a clear and vivid picture of how it affects those women afflicted by this debilitating condition. The feelings of shame and inadequacy, the disconnect with baby, the lack of insight into the condition are all graphically depicted. Rimmer also touches on the plasticity of early memories and the decisions faced by the family of those with dementia. A moving and thought-provoking read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Hachette Australia.

This was set in the 1950s and 1996. Four children tasked with the care of their dying father Patrick. Patrick has dementia and heart disease and is put into an aged care facility. His four children are Tim, Jeremy, Ruth and Beth, they are all very close and regularly get together with their father for weekly family dinners
Beth the youngest child starts the task of cleaning and sorting their father’s house. Beth struggles with being a new mum and her family members urge her to reach out and have counselling.
Beth discovers the door to the attic is locked, when the door is unlocked, she is shocked by what she finds. In amongst the jumble of possessions and rubbish Beth discovers strange paintings and handwritten notes that appear to have been written by her mother.
Beth struggles to piece together the information she finds with what she remembers about her mother Grace.
This was about family relationships, post-partum depression and secrets.
I loved the way it was written switching back and forward between Grace,
Beth and Maryanne. Each telling their story.

EXCERPT: I'm losing it. That's what this is. It's a panic attack, or maybe a good old fashioned nervous breakdown, and maybe I'm hallucinating those notes. I do feel a little disconnected from the world, and hallucinations are as good an explanation as any. I'm going to have to leave Noah with Hunter and go into a hospital before something unthinkable happens. Crazy. It's an awful word, one I'd never ever let myself use to describe another person, but I feel crazy right now, and I'm so ashamed that I start to cry.

The letter needs my attention, and the baby needs my attention, and the canvases must match notes from her, and all of this obviously means something, and the attic is a mess, and Dad's really going to die. It's all just too much.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: With her father recently moved to a care facility for his worsening dementia, Beth Walsh volunteers to clear out the family home and is surprised to discover the door to her childhood playroom padlocked. She’s even more shocked at what’s behind it—a hoarder’s mess of her father’s paintings, mounds of discarded papers and miscellaneous junk in the otherwise fastidiously tidy house.

As she picks through the clutter, she finds a loose journal entry in what appears to be her late mother’s handwriting. Beth and her siblings grew up believing their mother died in a car accident when they were little more than toddlers, but this note suggests something much darker. Beth soon pieces together a disturbing portrait of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and a husband who bears little resemblance to the loving father Beth and her siblings know. With a newborn of her own and struggling with motherhood, Beth finds there may be more tying her and her mother together than she ever suspected.

MY THOUGHTS: I really did not enjoy the first half of Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer. I skimmed passages and debated not finishing it. But I read on and just past the half way point my interest was piqued and I read the second half with a great deal of interest.

This is the first book by this author that I have read and I am still sitting on the fence as to whether I will read more from her. A little time and distance may give me a clearer perspective on that.

Things I didn't like included being 'lectured to' rather than feeling like a part of the story. This is particularly true in the first half. I didn't feel involved at all, or much sympathy for Beth, or anyone else for that matter. And I should have felt sympathy for Beth. It was obvious she was suffering from more than just 'baby blues'. But even so, I found the first half of the book rather overwrought. Personally, I like a little subtlety rather than having a point repeatedly rammed home.

The story is told through the eyes of three women; Grace in the 1950s, her sister Maryanne, and Grace's daughter Beth in the 1990s. The mystery is that surrounding Grace's disappearance, the uncovering of the truth surrounding it and Maryanne's role in the family unit. But we find out nothing about this mystery until the second half of the book. For me, it was introduced just in time and was the only thing that kept me reading.

Great cover!

😐😐😐

#TruthsINeverToldYou #NetGalley

'We have ceremonies like funerals - not for the departed but for the living, to remind one another that even in grief, we don't have to be alone.'

'Love doesn't just need compromise to survive - love, to its very essence, is compromise. It's genuinely wanting what's best for the other person, even when it trumps your own preferences.'

THE AUTHOR: Kelly Rimmer is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of ten novels, including The Secret Daughter and The Things We Cannot Say. She’s sold more than one million books, and her novels have been translated into more than 20 languages. Kelly lives in the Central West of New South Wales with her family and fantastically naughty dogs, Sully and Basil.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Hachette Australia via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of Truths I Never Told You by Kelly Rimmer for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon and my webpage sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/2020/03/...

‘I’m scared of so many things these days, but most of all now, I fear myself.’

The four Walsh siblings are coming to terms with the imminent death of their father, Patrick. Ill with both dementia and heart failure, he has been the only parent they have known for most of their lives. Tim is the oldest. Next are twins Ruth and Jeremy, then Beth. Fewer than four years separate oldest and youngest. Beth and her husband have a five-month-old son, Noah.

Once Patrick is moved into a care facility, the siblings must decide what to do with the house. Beth volunteers to start the clearing process. Anything to keep busy. Anything to stop her thinking about her impending loss. Anything to try to avoid her fear that she is failing as a parent to Noah.

Beth finds the door to the attic closed and padlocked. Once she gains entry, she’s shocked by what she finds inside. Her father, normally fastidious, has hoarded rubbish. There are also paintings he did, discarded papers and notes which seem to have been written by her mother, Grace. But the dates seem wrong. The Walsh siblings believed that their mother had died in a car accident, but one of the notes Beth finds reads like a suicide note. Beth has memories of her mother reading to her, and those memories can’t be accurate if the dates on some of the papers she finds are correct. Beth’s father can’t help: his dementia is robbing him of speech.

Beth herself is suffering. She is not sleeping, not managing and has withdrawn from family and friends. She’s in denial that anything is wrong.

What follows is a gripping story about family, about challenges and choices, about expectations, about the fact and impact of post-natal depression. Three voices tell the story across two generations: Grace, her sister Maryanne and Beth.

What really happened to Grace? Can Beth accept help? Post-natal depression is one of those cruel diseases that women often suffer in silence, feeling inadequate and overwhelmed. While there is (generally) more assistance available today, many women feel that asking for help is a sign of failure. It isn’t. This novel touches
on several important issues: including access to inexpensive contraception and to legal abortion.

I picked this novel up and read it during a day. I couldn’t put it down. I needed to know how it would end.

Well worth reading.

Note: My thanks to NetGalley and Hachette Australia for providing me with a free electronic copy of this book for review purposes.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Oh my heart!! Kelly Rimmer has done it again. She has written another book that tugs at the heart strings and doesn't let you go until long after you finish. This is another masterpiece!

I'm a fan of Kelly Rimmer's and Truths I Never Told You does not disappoint.

Kelly tackles modern problems, in this case post natal depression, with heart, truth and compassion. As a reader, I find myself arguing with, crying with and comforting her characters.

I highly recommend Truths I Never Told You or for that matter any novel by this exceptional author.

Truths I Never Told You is a moving, poignant novel of family secrets from Kelly Rimmer.

When the Walsh siblings agree it has become necessary to admit their terminally ill father to a hospice, Beth, the youngest of the four, volunteers to clean out the family home. The process is time-consuming, though straightforward until, behind a padlocked attic door, Beth finds a series of paintings, and pinned to one, a devastating note written by her late mother, Grace.
The missive in her mother’s elegant script reads like a suicide note, and the date doesn’t line up with what Beth had been told about her mother’s death. Desperate to understand the discrepancy, Beth throws her self into the search for more notes amongst the detritus cluttering the attic, and unearths a shocking secret that will challenge everything she believed to be true.

Beth’s contemporary timeline, as she cleans out her family home while avoiding her own emotional difficulties, alternates first with a series of letters written by Grace nearly forty years earlier, revealing a young mother overwhelmed by the demands of caring for four children under the age of four, and later, the perspective of Grace’s elder sister, Maryanne.

I was absorbed in this well paced story as Beth and her siblings faced the loss of their beloved father, the truth of Grace’s tragic death, and the unraveling of their childhood memories.

Most emphasis of the story however is placed on the issue linking Beth and Grace - Post Natal Depression. In the late 1950’s Grace’s distress in the aftermath of her pregnancies is dismissed by her doctor, whose advice amounts to ‘pull yourself together’, and is ignored by her husband. In 1996, Beth is unwilling to admit she is not coping with caring for her infant son, and it’s only through the intervention of her husband and sister that she seeks medical help, whose response is immediate and practical.
While I fortunately never developed PND after the births of my four children, many women I know have done so, experiencing a range of symptoms from mild anxiety to the extreme of post natal psychosis. Rimmer’s depiction of Grace and Beth’s struggle is sensitive and realistic, I felt deeply sympathetic towards both women who battled with their feelings of shame and confusion as the illness threatened to overwhelm them.

Rimmer also raises a number of other related issues, including the importance of access to inexpensive contraception, and safe, legal abortion to protect women’s emotional and physical health.

Written with heart and compassion, Truths I Never Told You is a thought-provoking and engaging novel.

It'll be too hard to review this book without giving any spoiler, so i don't want to carry on too much. I totally love it and would recommend this to friends. It's the story of four siblings, Tim, Ruth, Jeremy and Beth. With their dad's move to a care home, Beth finds a note which will open a secret about their mother. It sounds like a simple story but the author is successfully hooked me up to keep reading. It's a beautiful family story,
** Thanks Netgalley for an electronic ARC of this book

Truths I never told you is about exactly that, and the sad and often unnecessary consequences that evolve from those hidden truths.
It's about the ways that women especially, had to "creatively" conform to the established status quo in a time...not so very long ago...when women had virtually no voice to express their fears or concerns about anything.

This story delves into not only the circumstances of some hidden family truths, but also the psychology behind them, and how the keeping of them can be either a blessing or a curse...or both. And yet, ironically, the need to keep those truths hidden was borne out of a genuine desire to be loyal.

In an age where any form of contraception is frowned upon and abortion is a criminal offense, and married women were not employed in the workforce, young women who married into a "devout" relationship had very little, if any, means of birth control, and would often have children in quick succession.
This often led young struggling families to a rapid lifestyle decline as they struggled to make ends meet and support a growing family on one wage.

Struggling to conform to the established conditioning of the times, with regards to the roles of women in the late 1950's, Grace finds it very difficult to find a comfortable balance between her roles of motherhood, wife and housekeeper. She's starting to feel like a walking incubator, and as much as she loves her husband and her children, she is falling into a pattern of panic, fear and dread.
Grace's dilemma is exacerbated by the fact that she came from a well to do family who frowned upon her marriage to a man they saw as beneath her, they made no secret of their feelings for a man they believed would never amount to anything and they refused to offer any kind of substantial help...unless she left him.
Her problems are only made worse by her new husband's seeming unwillingness to understand or offer assistance to his new wife as she grapples with the implications of another pregnancy. And when things get harder because his job doesn't pay enough to support his young growing family, he starts to slack off and fall even further behind.

This is certainly a hard book to put down! I came to resent the times I had to leave it to do other things, but this is a book that requires your fullest attention and you will be grateful for having set aside some quality/quiet reading time to devote just to this story.
If like you are like me and struggle to remember who's who in family dynamics, I would suggest you take a note of the family members and their status as you are introduced to them early in the opening chapters. Not that there are too many, just that they all play important roles and it was good to have a reminder at hand until I quickly got used to everyone. This is just a personal thing and not a necessary thing.

Such a well conceived and well written story, I was riveted to the pages as it reads like a personal account of actual events, albeit often traumatizing, nonetheless I was totally drawn into the events as they unfolded.
So realistically credible, it was not hard to believe that this, sadly, could well have been someone's story.
Hats off to this author for creating such a plausible account of the interconnecting lives and emotions of these characters, with all of their idiosyncratic dispositions making them even more credible.

I would absolutely recommend this book to lovers of a well delivered story.

5⭐️'s

Many thanks to Netgalley and Hachette Australia for my digital copy to read and review.

Beth Walsh was the youngest of the four siblings; Tim the oldest by only three years, with twins Ruth and Jeremy in between. Their mother Grace had been dead since they were toddlers and their father, Patrick had cared for them since. As a single father, he was devoted to his four children and as a result they were all very close. With Patrick having recently been moved to a care facility, ill with dementia and heart failure, the siblings were trying to come to terms with his imminent death. Beth in particular wasn’t coping. Her baby, Noah was only five months old and she was struggling with motherhood, determined to carry on regardless.

When Beth found loose papers in the attic of her father’s home, yellowed with age, which appeared to have been written by her mother, she was confused. The dates were wrong – she could remember her mother reading to her at bedtime; cuddling her when she was sad. But how could she remember when – according to the dates – she was too young?

Beth’s husband and siblings were worried about her – she wasn’t behaving rationally; had withdrawn from everyone. Their love and concern didn’t penetrate through Beth’s wall of despair – something would have to give…

Truths I Never Told You is another dynamic novel by Aussie author Kelly Rimmer. Postpartum depression can strike anyone – the research Ms Rimmer has done on this subject is obvious. Through the generations women have suffered in silence, while men, for the most, have been unaware of their partner’s raging thoughts. Now things are different from back in the mid to late 50s and into the 60s thankfully, because although postpartum depression is still with us, treatment is much further advanced. Truths I Never Told You is a heartbreaking tale, touching, poignant as well as uplifting; the love that binds family members tight can sometimes break them apart. Told in the voices of Beth, Grace and Maryanne, Truths I Never Told You is one I highly recommend.

With thanks to Hachette AU and NetGalley for my ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting book which explores some thought provoking themes. In 1996 Beth is a new mother who had tried to have a baby for six years, but is struggling to bond with her baby. In 1958 Beth’s mother Grace is also struggling with being a mother. The story moves back and forth between Beth’s voice in 1996, and Grace and her sister Mary Anne’s voices, both in 1958. The book explores motherhood, grief, family attachment, and women’s roles in the 1950’s. It is well written and the plot is complex and absorbing. Definitely worth a look.